Amazon Fire Phone: Game-Changer or Gimmick?

7/22/2014 9:00PM

You can operate new Amazon’s Fire phone just by moving your head. Are gimmicks like that enough? Personal tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler reviews the Fire. Photo: Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... you probably look down at your phone screen all day long ... that's the big idea and the very first smartphone from Amazon dot com ... the new Fire Phone which starts shipping this week ... can be controlled just by moving your head ... without touching the screen you can make menus pop up a three D objects in the ... inspire a game changer for the touch screen world ... certainly this ... is hard to even have that debate because Fire Phone stumbles on some fundamentals mastered by competitors ... but charge a similar premium press the fires nice to have features include a big screen ... and a service called Firefly ... iTunes we will be ... happy with the camera ... it works most of the time but not all it's ... I wonder who Jeff awfully about their at BSI dot com is my real problem ... is that I struggle to make Fire phone's battery lasts my sixteen hour day ... and by the history the stress test ... I phone five S lasts into the quarter hours longer ... also with fire you can expect to get all the Android apps to bulk ... bill runs an average of Google's operating system ... to collapse like maps driving due to our walk outs ... and a fire can transfer most app purchases from previous entry but it's ... so bad to controlling your phone which if rates which Amazon calls Dynamic Perspective ... for cameras on the front of ... a bomb was another sensors and software ... movie images on the screen here that even in the dark ... thanks to infrared technology ... it makes for some pretty animated icons and walk sprints inside buyers maps app dynamic perspective makes it look like you're one of the Amazons drones hovering above revealed ... the problem is that you have to learn how to come and go with your head ... or one hand gestures ... Noddy flicking and twitching just the right way ... this work for me only about three quarters of that ... just in effective enough to be a deal breaker ... nobody wants to be the first on the Street ... repeat of the twitching expo ... I get the Amazon credit for creativity ... having defied the smartphone arms race by inventing some original ideas ... the Port's first time ... I've wasted stuck to its mission of delivering better ... faster ... cheaper technology ... perhaps making an inexpensive hands ... a senior targeted simple ... or one with an extra long lasting battery ... the fire we got instead ... isn't going to die much versus the competition ...